Hearing Republicants

Incredible as it may seem, I occasionally grow impervious to whiny Republicants and anti-vaxxers.

It was Nora Joyce of Wilmette, Illinois who acted as my personal pallet cleanser and refreshed my ability to hear Republicants anew. Her recent letter to the Chicago Tribune goes as follows:

 

Mandating proof of vaccination for Cook County Park District facilities is a violation of taxpayer's rights. It is wrong to deny entry and participation in Park District facilities to people who pay Cook County property taxes just because they're unvaccinated. This vaccine order is not about safety.

I am embarrassed to reach into my wallet to show my card and continue this nonsense. Going to a facility with only vaccinated people will not prevent anyone from spreading COVID-19.

It is time for taxpayers to speak up about this nonsense.

Ah, Nora. What a lovely read. And continuing on the bright side, thank you for getting vaccinated.

But now I must journey to the not-so-bright side.

In your letter, you fail to mention what the vaccinate mandate is about. 

Perhaps the big, evil government you presumably dislike is a believer in the axiom use it or lose it, and is throwing its weight around merely to sustain its ability to throw it around.

Or perhaps they're trying to discourage people from using Park District facilities, so that one day a vulture capitalist might buy them and convert same into gated communities with the (yawn) attendant golf course.

Wouldn't that be nice?

There, you could cavort with unvaccinated folk minus the paralyzing social embarrassment of having to show a vaccine card and play the discreet form of Russian Roulette you seem to crave.

On second thought, maybe the big, evil government just wants to embarrass you.

Yeah, that's it.

Your repeated mention of 'taxpayer' and 'taxpayer rights' intrigued me. Is there a separate set of rights accorded to taxpayers? Because I spent hours scouring the Internet and couldn't find them, much less how paying them guarantees you access to anything. 

If you'll trouble yourself to look at the breakdown of your annual property taxes, the overwhelming percentage of them goes to your local school district. Only a teeny-tiny percentage goes to your local park district. 

To quote the late, great Groucho Marx: would you like to leave in a huff or shall I call a cab?  

And finally, Nora, I'm not aware of a health care official ever saying that gathering solely with vaccinated folk would prevent the spread of COVID-19. I think the word you're looking for is reduce. Lessen. Mitigate.

Surely your either-or, black-or-white brain remains capable of making such distinctions?

Alas, probably not.

But the biggest question your letter presents is why you even got vaccinated in the first place.

Really hoping your ovaries are dried up and shriveled, Nora. Please don't reproduce.

Fucked

When I can withstand the way too-frequent five-minute commercial breaks, I enjoy listening to Thom Hartmann. He's knowledgeable and his moral compass unerringly hews to due north. You know, like those guys on the other side of the aisle.

A few days ago, he was reporting on the social media posts consumed by anti-vaxxers yet frequently posted by entities hostile to the United States. For the anti-vaxxers, the source of the post doesn't matter. As long as it reinforces their beliefs it is all to the good. 

Even as the Republicans all around them are hospitalized and die.

And I'm fine with that. To paraphrase a quote attributed to nineteenth-century Army general Philip Sheridan, the only good Republican is a dead Republican.

Hartmann read one post in particular that stopped me in my tracks, at least metaphorically speaking. (I was actually behind the wheel of my beloved 2015 Honda Accord Sport at the time.)

It alleged that the COVID vaccine alters human DNA to the point where those injected are no longer considered human and as a consequence, forfeit their human rights. This was given as reason number-one for the epidemic of government-led gun seizures we see happening in every nook and cranny of the United States.

Funny how often things lead to (supply name of sitting Democratic president here) gonna take away your guns. 

I'm not sure when we became so stupid, but I'm pretty sure it aligns with the popular acceptance of social media posts as an unswerving source of truth. Because with all the empirical evidence one needs to supply before positioning a post to go viral, it's no wonder, is it?

I again suggest a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Translated, this means we're fucked. Hopefully it'll happen quickly.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

As someone not old-enough to know how we came to look upon southerners as intellectually inferior compared to people from other parts of the country, I understand perfectly now why that perception might again be in play.

Rightly known for their hospitality (at least as long as you didn't look or worship differently from them), I first experienced it on a family vacation to Kentucky and Tennessee. Of course, as a ten year-old I wasn't engaging anyone in conversations about civil rights or segregation.

No, I was marveling at the natural wonders of Mammoth Cave and the Smoky Mountains, being intoxicated by the century-old vapors in the smokehouse at the Henry Clay mansion and falling in love with a caramel-colored race horse named Traffic Judge who insisted on following me and two siblings around the fence of his (or her) enclosure.

The passage of time has obscured the reasons my parents gave as to why we couldn't take our newfound friend home.

Not so many years later I began to learn about the Civil Rights movement. And the older I got the more plain-spoken my lessons became. The venom displayed by so many in that region was hideous. Ugly. Appalling.

I'll never forget the footage of people spitting on and screaming at the five Black children being escorted into Little Rock High School and the rage that contorted those faces into something not quite human. Or the unprovoked and entirely unjustified treatment accorded the marchers who crossed the Edmund Pettus bridge on March 7, 1965.

No one was going to tell southerners what to do. Or who they could or couldn't hate. If they wanted to treat Black people like the material we flush down toilets, well then by God they were going to do so.

After rejecting the Democratic party en masse when it sought to stop their overt mistreatment of Blacks, that defiance has again flared to new heights.

Acting in the interests of the common good, a mostly Democratic coterie of politicians and public health officials have urged Americans to mask and get vaccinated in the hopes of containing the Coronavirus before it mutates into the variant capable of killing all of us.

Without a single, coherent reason, a largely-Republican contingent has resisted these measures each and every step of the way.

Being asked to wear a lightweight mask amounts to 'tyranny'. The virus is a hoax. And most-pathetically, their brainless, middle-school obstinacy proves they are indomitable. Impervious. And immune.

I'm not even going to touch the hypocrisy of their “my body, my choice” rationale.

And for a time, it was debatable. But as vaccines have become widely available and the sentient portion of our population took advantage of them, the resistant continued to resist. Centered in the south, it is those very states that have suffered the highest infection rates from the Delta variant.

And it is precisely that portion of the population who knows what random and capricious bullshit science is. For the rest of us, this outcome couldn't be more predictable. They ignored the virus, pretended it wasn't a 'thing' and still clutching to their cult leader's words, insist it still isn't.

But even after their cult leader admitted vaccines were important and that they should avail themselves of them, they booed him. While Mount Everest straddles the border of Tibet and Nepal, the Mount Everest of Stupid rests squarely in Cullman, Alabama.

Even as their children are hospitalized in record numbers and the availability of ICU rooms evaporates like spit on a Las Vegas sidewalk. Even as surgeries can't be performed because hospitals are stuffed with unvaccinated patients. And even as our health care workers teeter on the edge of exhaustion

As a once-popular comedian observed “You can't fix stupid.”

This is the fallout from the political party that once called itself the 'Family Values' party. Apparently that includes preventing school districts from protecting your kids from a stubborn and persistent virus. How about it, Ron DeSantis?

I would like nothing better than to indulge Republicans and their COVID death-wish. Taken as a group, they're a largely despicable and ignorant one. America's weakest link. The phrase 'thinning the herd' springs to mind.

But unlike southerners and their misplaced hospitality, I have no interest in providing COVID-19 a forever home. Yeah, I know. You're the fearless one. I'm the snowflake. I get it. Right up until the moment you or your kids are wheezing on a ventilator and having second thoughts about vaccines. 

I'll keep that in mind as I read your obit. 

 

Squeezing Our Eyes Shut

Individual empowerment is a wonderful thing.

Without it, the Boeing employee troubled by his employer's rush job on a poorly-designed airplane stays silent. The woman being victimized by high-ranking executives at her firm has no option but to submit—or quit.

Individual empowerment is a critical component of a functioning democracy. Otherwise, power congeals at the top, where it is too often abused. But abuses of power can run both ways. They can flow from the bottom up as well.

The best example are the stupendously naive Americans who believe having to vaccinate their kids constitutes an onerous breach of their civil liberties and is a classic case of government overreach. They claim it violates their religious beliefs. And is cover for a insidious plot to turn their children into aliens.

(Okay. Just kidding on that last one. But I doubt anti-vaxxers would know the difference.)

Anti-vaxxers tend to be young, and grew-up in a world free of things like measles, polio and rubella. Sadly, they also grew-up in a world infested by social media, where in a truly perverted take on democracy, anyone with a phone can concoct a conspiracy theory (remember pink slime?) and have it go viral.

Millennials and generation Y in particular embrace these theories, allowing them to gain traction instantly. I mean, if it's not from an established media source it just has to be true, right?

This much more quickly than the realization that hey—we never had measles outbreaks when I was a kid. Why is that?

That's because another generation, undistracted by the vacuousness of social media and possessing a more inclusive hierarchy, understood the value of mandated vaccinations. They kept us healthy.

Yes, there's a reason why you grew up unconcerned with measles and polio and rubella!

You get that, right?

Yet anti-vaxxers persist, even as children all around them die. Don't they realize their exaggerated sense of entitlement will kill still more? But congratulations on defending your religious beliefs (exactly what religion forbids vaccinations, anyway?) and exercising your misshapen idea of free will.

They're definitely worth risking our public health for.

Remarkably, there was an outbreak of common sense from Seattle's public schools. They had the temerity to tell the parents of its students that if their children weren't vaccinated, they would be prohibited from attending its schools.

Wow. Someone clearly has a clue.

But in other, less-enlightened places like New Jersey, parents protested pending legislation that would require similar action by its parents. Sadly, the parents succeeded and the bill died.

So who will they blame when their kid succumbs to measles? I'm guessing it won't be themselves.

Dear millennial. I'm just a racist, sexist, materialistic, technophobic boomer. Feel free to dismiss this with an fatigued recitation of "OK, boomer" and an airy wave of your hand. Yes, we are to blame for the wretched conditions under which you exist.

But you know what? I actually agree with you. Blame rests entirely with us for not insisting you learn how to think. If we had, you'd know George Santayana was right. He said those who remain ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it.

The best of luck in finding your way to the truth of mandated vaccinations. I hope your a-ha moment arrives before your kid's infection.